There are a few subreddits I check out from time to time because Lemmy doesn’t have the volume of users required to keep those niche conversations active....
That place really went to shit over the past year. Which is hardly surprising seeing how many good people were pushed away from the platform.
Good mods were replaced by power tripping shitheads and good posters and commenters were driven off when they couldn’t use their desired app and the subreddits they liked went to shit or were nuked. Meanwhile, bots are ruining everything else.
And let’s not even get started on the ads, the IPO shenanigans, the AI thing…
Reddit needs to be taken out back and shot. It’s the humane thing to do; we shouldn’t let it suffer like this.
I didn’t even bother watching the last one. Don’t think I’ve ever even met someone who’s seen it either… But hey, apparently it made enough to warrant another movie, so what the fuck do I know?
Close. The latest one is Fast X, which is actually the 11th movie.
I’ve seen the first three or so when they first came out. I don’t really hate the series as such, but loathe the wider cultural impact that it had. For example, it ruined racing video games for quite a while. Everything suddenly needed to have modded rice rockets with underbody lights, driven by annoying dickheads with boring, cliche back stories. It effectively ruined the Need for Speed series.
That was my understanding of it when it first came out. Which is something I’m wholly not interested in as a concept. It’d just retroactively ruin the series for me.
The only person laughing is usually the person who made the joke and it’s generally just irritating to everyone else who just wants to get on with their day. I might feel differently if we like, got the day off work for April Fools Day I guess
I absolutely loathe this day. Most of it is just dumb, silly and annoying. Especially when this dumb shit gets forced on you by companies whose marketing teams think they’re clever.
I also used to work at a radio/TV station where we covered pranks during april fools. That was a real eye-opener: there are waaaaay too many idiots out there who fall for jokes and take things at face value. Basically, they’re a cruel way to mess with vulnerable, gullible people.
Now, if someone wants to make a joke at their own expense, go for it. But don’t do it at the expense of others.
It’s absolutely gotten way worse the past 15 years or so.
As someone who works for a newspaper: the days leading up to and directly following april 1st tend to be very frustrating because of this.
Usually starting on the 30th, we get the first ‘funny’ press releases, with most showing up on the 31st. Which means you have to be extra careful not to use something that SEEMS plausible enough not to warrant extra suspicion on days other than april 1st.
As journalists, we’re perhaps more aware than most regarding potential pranks. We’re always taught to question sources. Which makes it all the more annoying that so many companies and organisations try to pull one over on us. Making reliable, accurate news is difficult enough as it is without all these fuckers trying to poison the well.
Basically, companies and organisations who do it usually get their press releases trashed for a month afterwards on principle. Waste my time? Welcome to the trash bin.
At our radio station, we start Christmas music on December 6th, right after the Dutch celebration of Sinterklaas. And like every other station out there, we play the same exact ten songs every hour until december 27th.
Most people probably aren’t really aware, but as a station you get sent a LOT of unsolicited music. Which also includes a ton of Christmas themed songs starting around June. Everyone wants to be the next Mariah Carey.
One year, our music programmers decide to get creative: “Everyone has the same playlist. Fuck that! We’ll play the Christmas songs nobody else plays!”
So they meticulously comb through that mountain of CD’s that we got throughout the year, digging up the proverbial diamonds in a pile of manure. And they put together a lovely playlist featuring unique, decent songs.
December 6th rolls around. 9 AM. It’s The Big Day. The new playlist goes live. By 9.15 the first calls come in. By 10 AM, the phone is red hot with calls. By 11 AM, someone phones in an honest-to-God death threat. The listeners aren’t having it; they want goddamn Mariah Carey or nothing at all. So by midday, the new playlist gets yanked and replaced by four-times-per-hour ‘All I want for Christmas is you’.
And since that year, we know better than to get creative around Christmas. Don’t fuck with Mariah Carey fans…
I absolutely love his channel. The sheer amount of bad puns he can come up with for his April Fools day video is amazing. God only knows how long it takes him to record these without cracking up.
Just a warning to anyone interested in the coming eclipse. Avoid the glasses sold at Canadian Tire. I just bought two pairs of eclipse glasses at Canadian Tire. I decided to test them right after I got outside and immediately noticed an issue. Both glasses have a hazy appearance around the sun....
And to emphasize: it really is essential to use the proper glasses for an eclipse like this.
I experienced a total eclipse back in 1999. You’ll be looking at the sun for a few minutes. And even though it might look dark to you, it WILL do permanent damage if you stare at it for that long without the proper protection.
Back in 1999 in the Netherlands, seven people had to be treated for eye injuries because of the eclipse. Two suffered permanent damage, with only about 10 percent sight remaining.
With the discussion of whether assisted dying should be allowed in Scotland befing brought up again, I was wondering what other people thought of the topic....
Absolutely. Thankfully we actually have it in the Netherlands, with some restrictions. I.e you do need to be clearly ‘suffering’ for a doctor to agree to it.
Personally though, I think there shouldn’t be any restrictions on this beyond making sure it’s a well articulated wish and not someone just having a bad day.
If say, a healthy 30 year old wants off this ride, they should be allowed to die with dignity at a time and place of their choosing. Nobody asked to be born, so we should at least give them the freedom to choose how they depart this realm.
In my opinion, nobody should disagree with that - it’s not your place to force someone to live if they don’t want to.
Difficult weather conditions and disease have affected production in West Africa, which produces about 70% of the world’s cocoa. The two largest producers, Ivory Coast and Ghana, have been hit by a combination of heavy rain, dry heat and disease recently....
Honestly, the shrinkflation alone has already soured me on most commercial chocolate products. Candy bars were twice the size when I was a kid - while also costing less.
These days the candy bars you get are all mini/‘fun size’ with the actual mini bars being even smaller.
Basically, it’s just not worth it to buy them. And that’s not even considering the change in recipe that they went through.
On April 8, a total solar eclipse will sweep across North America. The path of totality — a 115-mile (185-kilometer) wide route where https://www.space.com/55-earths-moon-formation-composition-and-orbit.html will cover 100% of https://www.space.com/58-the-sun-formation-facts-and-characteristics.html’s disk — stretches...
I got to see a total eclipse in the Netherlands back in august of 1999. It was truly remarkable. Most people really only get to see it once or twice during their lifetime - so definitely make it a point not to miss it if you’re in a region where it’s a total eclipse.
Once you’ve actually experienced one, it’s very easy to understand why they had such a profound impact on people throughout the centuries. Eerie doesn’t quite cut it.
The analogy certainly worked for me when I first read up on it. “Oh, different servers speaking the same language so they can communicate even though they’re separate entities”.
I imagine the only people who are really confused by it are the ones who simply cannot grasp analogies in general.
For me, it’s just the fact that phones… are phones. They all look the same, function the same, there’s just nothing new happening with them.
Sure, chips get better and faster, they’ll add another camera to it and fiddle with the dimensions a bit, but that’s not innovation. All phones look like boring rectangular slabs.
Back in the late 90’s, phones had way more variety and personality. Candybar, flip, even the sidetalkin’ taco that was the Nokia N-Gage. A Motorola Razr looked nothing like say, a Nokia or Sony Ericsson. And those were distinctly different from your Samsung or Mitsubishi phones (Yes, Mitsubishi made phones!).
I’d love it if we went back to more phone variety, but I fear the smartphone has effectively killed every other style. Most people wouldn’t ditch their big screen smartphone to go back to a small flip phone.
It really was the thing everyone latched on to with the N-Gage. I actually still own a first gen model that I bought on release. It was actually pretty decent, both as a phone and the games it played. Of course, it never really took off, but I enjoyed using it.
As for the sidetalking… I bought a headset for it to avoid that :D
I’ve never had a Droid, but loved every other Motorola that I’ve owned. Including the original StarTac and Razr. They made some really nice phones over the years.
i think we need Cracked-style articles back. desperately. or like, a guy doing a weird thing and writing a piece on it. sites like those are declining faster than the glaciers.
A lot of it boils down to the users. Personally, I miss when the internet mostly consisted of us nerds.
Back in 1995 when I first got online, the web was very much a nerd domain. You needed a certain level of computer knowledge to get online, which really acted as a filter. It meant that most of us shared a certain level of understanding and the drive to use such a medium. We disagreed on Star Trek and Star Wars, but to the outside world, we were ALL nerds. Back then, the average person didn’t even think of going online.
These days, even the most tech illiterate can get online. In fact, they don’t even think about it; it’s that integrated in their daily life.
While growth also gave us nice things like large forums, web shopping, YouTube, etc… by and large I think we’d be better off if this was still a nerd domain.
I’m a professional writer for a newspaper. We’re also occasionally asked to put up SEO commercial text for our advertising partners. And good god, they look like they were written by a lobotomised monkey on a malfunctioning typewriter.
The reason why the early web worked so well is exactly BECAUSE of that early adopter profile. Getting online was a nerd thing; it had a filtering effect of who could get online. And the ones that did all shared that same passion for the platform. There was an assumed baseline of shared knowledge and shared culture.
Today we consider such things problematic. Back then, that was just how it was. And why it worked.
In fact, at our newspaper only about a quarter of the writers are ‘real’ journalists with journalism degrees, including myself.
From my personal experience (20 years in radio, 8 in newspapers), even most actual journalists don’t really call themselves journalists. I tend to refer to myself as a writer in general, since I also do commercial copy, I write reviews and handle all sorts of general writing and public contact.
Journalist is not a protected job title. Anyone can call themselves a journalist. Even that other poster. Because of that, I tend not to use it as a job title, since it’s been devalued a bit by everyone with a blog or vlogging channel calling themselves journalist.
I’m seriously wondering what the other poster’s point was…
Well that’s pretty much every platform’s lifecycle. Starts small, reaches a sweet spot and either implodes or sucks ass.
I was on Digg, I had a MySpace page, I was an early Twitter user, I had a Reddit account… who knows how long I’ll be on here. But for now, I’m happy to be one of the users on the upswing.
The early days of web shopping sure were interesting. I was a very early adopter compared to most people.
The very first thing I ever bought online was a flashlight back in 1999. Which was such a novelty at the time that I actually visited the two guys who ran that shop from a literal broom closet in order to collect it. I was like their third customer ever. These days they have 75 employees and around 7 million euros of revenue.
Collecting a web order seems silly now, but at that time it basically avoided a two week wait. Back in 1998-2005, if you bought something online in the Netherlands, you usually had to transfer the money by bank. Which took a few days. After that, they would send the product, which again took a few days.
In 2005 we got a new online payment method that let you transfer the money immediately, much like paying at a register. That made it way more convenient for everyone and you saw massive increases in spending year over year.
On special today - Weiner Snipple (startrek.website)
Reddit is so toxic
There are a few subreddits I check out from time to time because Lemmy doesn’t have the volume of users required to keep those niche conversations active....
A new Matrix movie is in development with The Cabin in the Woods filmmaker Drew Goddard at the helm (www.joblo.com)
April Fools Day is the dumbest holiday in existence
The only person laughing is usually the person who made the joke and it’s generally just irritating to everyone else who just wants to get on with their day. I might feel differently if we like, got the day off work for April Fools Day I guess
PSA: Eclipse Glasses from Canadian Tire
Just a warning to anyone interested in the coming eclipse. Avoid the glasses sold at Canadian Tire. I just bought two pairs of eclipse glasses at Canadian Tire. I decided to test them right after I got outside and immediately noticed an issue. Both glasses have a hazy appearance around the sun....
Would you be in favour of assisted dying being introduced for terminally ill patients in your country?
With the discussion of whether assisted dying should be allowed in Scotland befing brought up again, I was wondering what other people thought of the topic....
Florida is about to erase climate change from most of its laws | Grist (grist.org)
Cocoa prices hit $10,000 per metric ton for the first time ever (www.cnbc.com)
Difficult weather conditions and disease have affected production in West Africa, which produces about 70% of the world’s cocoa. The two largest producers, Ivory Coast and Ghana, have been hit by a combination of heavy rain, dry heat and disease recently....
NASA is holding a total eclipse 2024 briefing today. Here's how to watch it live (www.space.com)
On April 8, a total solar eclipse will sweep across North America. The path of totality — a 115-mile (185-kilometer) wide route where https://www.space.com/55-earths-moon-formation-composition-and-orbit.html will cover 100% of https://www.space.com/58-the-sun-formation-facts-and-characteristics.html’s disk — stretches...
What is Fediverse, precious!? (midwest.social)
Why I refuse to upgrade - 8 minutes video explaining why it's not that interesting to upgrade phones nowadays (www.youtube.com)
What do you miss from the old internet?
i think we need Cracked-style articles back. desperately. or like, a guy doing a weird thing and writing a piece on it. sites like those are declining faster than the glaciers.